


Welcome To Winter Murderland

by TheSilverQueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: #WinterMurderland, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Hannibal Cre-Ate-ive, M/M, Paintball!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-19
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 17:10:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8900893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverQueen/pseuds/TheSilverQueen
Summary: When Beverly drags Will to "Winter Murderland" he's expecting another boring night akin to the opening of the Evil Minds Research Museum. Only it's a fantastic paintball place and Will finds, to his shock, that he's actually rather good, until he eventually ends up in a head-to-head rivalry with the other top scorer, who is known only as the Chesapeake Ripper.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to Hannibal Cre-Ate-Ive's [#WinterMurderland event](http://hannibalcreative.tumblr.com/post/153785169504/we-just-couldnt-resist-a-holiday-challenge-if)! 
> 
> I have no excuse for this mess. Although I did make a point of reaching out to someone to make sure it wasn’t completely ridiculous. But this is also Hannibal so I guess our measure of “completely ridiculous” is a tad off . . . . Also I've never actually ever played paintball, so that's why I keep things as vague as possible about gameplay. Apologies in advance for all the liberties I take with it.

To be perfectly honest, when Will had first gotten wind of “Winter Murderland” his immediate instinct had been to say, “Seriously? The Evil Minds Research Museum wasn’t bad enough?”

Beverly, darling friend that she was, had insisted point black that Will was to come with her “or else”.

Will had therefore taken what he chose to be the smarter route and arrived on time.

To his surprise, Winter Murderland is a well-decorated, lavish building. It doesn’t scream over-the-top or garish at all, but clean lines, soft lights, and a polite staff. And it doesn’t even turn out to do anything with the FBI or Jack Crawford or dead bodies at all. It’s actually, as it turns out, a fairly new paintball place with tasteful winter themes.

The owner is Margot Verger, which makes Will blink for a second, but what really makes him startle is that on her arm is a blushing, beaming Alana.

“Oh! Hi, Will,” Alana says.

“Um, hi.”

Thankfully, Beverly takes the lead in that awkward conversation and it turns out that Margot Verger is indeed _that_ Margot Verger, only when she went to a therapist that person, whoever it was, had quietly recommended that she ditch her brother anyways regardless of the money and put her up in a hotel. She’d then crossed paths with Alana Bloom and decided to start her own business as the ultimate middle finger to her brother and sexist father. Winter Murderland is her success story.

“Winter is my favorite season,” Margot explains as she hands out gear. “And Murderland was more of . . . morbid joke, but the paint you’ll be splattering each other with is red like blood, so I figured it fit.”

As they gear up, Margot leads them to their particular room and points to an electronic board that is currently flashing a cheerful “Welcome to Winter Murderland! Have fun killing each other” sign. Once they start the game, the sign changes to an occupied room, so no one accidentally wanders in, and once they leave it displays their team leaderboard and their overall score, so they can see who won and where they’re placed in the league of everyone who comes to the place.

“As you can see, our top scorer is the Chesapeake Ripper,” Margot says. “He’s been the reigning champ for, oh, three or four months now.”

Beverly smirks. “We’ll see about that.”

* * *

As it turns out, nobody comes close to the Chesapeake Ripper. But in the end, it doesn’t really matter.

Will finds it . . . refreshing. It’s less constricting than practicing shooting a gun, and a lot more fun. No one cares if he does weird things here because, hey, they’re all doing weird things and making weird noises trying not to get tagged out. And they all look ridiculous at the end, splattered with glitter and confetti from the random traps or glitter bombs teams can acquire on top of the red paint.

“So,” Beverly says as they struggle out of their gear, “was it worth it, Graham?”

Will pretends to consider it. “Well . . .”

“William Graham.”

“Okay, okay! It wasn’t that bad, actually. I might come back.”

“And all it took was a paintball game,” Beverly says mournfully. “If I’d known that, I would have dragged you out here _weeks_ ago.”

“Hey, I went out for pizza that one time.”

“True. You up for more pizza?”

Will shrugs. He’s already somehow managed to waste away half a day without once having a hallucination or saying something really weird or looking at cases about dead bodies. Pizza surely won’t be harder.

* * *

Will actually does come back. Once more with Beverly, and a few more times with the entire team once Beverly works her magic on Jack and the rest, but sometimes he comes on his own too and just fools around. It’s finds it strangely satisfying to splatter people with paint and watch his score slowly creep up and up and up, until one day he comes in yawning, keys in his nickname (Wolf Trap, because Will’s imagination doesn’t really extend to names) and nearly drops everything when the screen flashes bright yellow and confetti falls on the electronic screen.

“What the hell!”

Thankfully, a passing employee takes pity on him. “Everyone in the top 5 gets a special greeting screen,” he explains. “You’ve – wow, you’ve surpassed the Ripper!”

Will has a moment where he almost wonders if there’s some new killer prancing about he doesn’t know about before he connects the dots and realizes that the man is talking about the Chesapeake Ripper, the record holder for the top score in Winter Murderland. And, well, Will would be more impressed with surpassing the record holder if he was one, doing it for the record, and two, knew he was doing it. Will’s just been minding his own business, generally.

Apparently, the Chesapeake Ripper is most certainly more observant than him, because the next Will comes back he only gets balloons because the Ripper is back in the top spot.

And thus starts their little rivalry, and every time Will sees the golden confetti instead of the balloons it’s almost like a shot of coffee in the veins. He and the Ripper trade spots for most of December, and even Margot and Alana start taking bets on how long they can hold their streaks before the other unseats them again.

This rivalry, actually, is the only reason Will agrees to participate in the open to the public paintball clash.

“Come on, you’ll love it,” Alana wheedles.

Will groans. “I love paintball. I don’t love lots of people.”

“If you don’t, you’re definitely going to lose to the Ripper,” Margot says, because of course she’s the stick to Alana’s carrot. And a rather scary one too, sometimes; the last time Will had come in sick, she’d driven him out with shouts about contamination and the spread of sickness before she turned around and ordered premium expensive chicken soup delivered straight to his door.

“But that would actually require me to be sociable.”

He finds out the hard way that Beverly signs him up behind his back when she turns up at the crack of dawn, cackling, to drag him out of bed.

* * *

To his delight, everyone is at least given the dignity of their own personalized face masks, so they can bombard each other without hesitation and also so that Will gets an excuse not to talk too much since due to all the people running around and screaming it becomes really hard to hear from behind a mask.

Will just does his normal thing – find good cover and pick people off when they get bold. And slowly, bit by bit, his score creeps up, except that of course the Ripper’s score creeps up too.

Will is actually so busy doing his own thing that after a while, it only dawns on him that there is silence because between him and the Ripper, they’ve actually taken down everyone else. Literally everyone else is in the gallery now, panting and removing their gear, which leaves Will and his greatest archenemy to duke it out.

Will groans. This is _exactly_ why he didn’t want to come. And also because now their scores are tied, which leaves only one measure of recourse.

“You are always free to forfeit,” a man suddenly calls. His voice is calm and measured, not the least bit unstable from all the running and darting around he must have been doing to take out all the other players. It’s also got a rather thick accent, but it just makes Will more interested because actually, it’s an accent he can’t categorize and usually Will is very good at picking out accents.

“Nah,” Will says. “I like the confetti.”

“I noticed.”

“ _You_ could always forfeit,” Will says hopefully. He’s really not looking forward to the end of this match anyways, when they all go out to eat and Will has to actually be somewhat nice so that Margot doesn’t look bad.

“Hmm. I’m afraid that I would not live through the hit to my reputation.”

“Reputation over kindness?”

“Kindness is what we choose to make.”

“Oh, is that how you get through life?”

“No, Wolf Trap,” the man says, and something about his tone makes Will picture him smiling, just ever so slightly. Not to much – this man is methodical and precise, like a surgeon’s scalpel, so maybe just a crinkle of the eyes or a twitch of the mouth. But Will can hear the fondness there, somewhat distant yet still present. “I simply live.”

Will hums. Another check mark under “possible doctor” for “ego”. “Are you a doctor, by any chance?”

“ . . . I was.”

“Cool.”

And then Will flings himself out and charges, because he’s pretty certain he knows exactly where the Ripper is located based on Will’s familiarity with the floor plan and the way the man’s voice has been echoing, and he’s just congratulating himself on getting the upper hand when the man in black gear – the Ripper, he presumes – whips around, makes a contortion Will didn’t know the human body could make, and fires his own gun at the exact same moment Will does.

The huge screen chimes, and then Will sees “Wolf Trap” and “Chesapeake Ripper” declared as tied winners.

Which is when Will turns back to the man and sees – well. He’s frankly delectable, to be honest, with silver-auburn hair and sharp cheekbones and broad shoulders that practically ooze confidence. Will’s struck by the urge to hug him and see whether he’s as soft as the comfortable clothing underneath his gear suggests or as sharp as the wit that graces his tongue and eyes.

“Wolf Trap, I presumes,” says the man Will currently wants to tackle into some bedsheets.

“Er, yeah. Chesapeake Ripper?”

“Hmm. Alana was having fun that day,” he explains, and his voice is even better up close. Smooth and confident and luxurious like rich chocolate, and Will wants to bathe in it.

And then the man does something with his face, almost like a swallowed spit-take, and suddenly his entire body is screaming _heart-eyes_ , so loud that Will’s empathy has Will mirroring the careful seductive circling before he even realizes he is doing it.

It makes the man smile like a lion acknowledging an equal. “My real name is Hannibal Lecter. And yes, I was a doctor, but I’ve now switched to psychiatry.”

And that’s a bucket of cold water on the bang-as-soon-as-possible mindset.

Hannibal laughs, but it’s a kind laugh, not a mocking one. Acknowledgment, not judgment, and Will appreciates the difference. “I gather you’ve had some . . . not so great experiences with psychiatrists.”

“They always look at me like they want to eat me,” Will confirms.

Hannibal prowls just a step closer, because really that’s the best word to describe him. He moves like a dancer, smooth as silk, as Will’s mind casts him as a graceful jaguar, deadly and silent but all the more beautiful for it. “That merely says that you are worth consuming. Just what is hiding under that lovely skin of yours, Will Graham?”

“Aaaaand you can do the rest of the learning about each other in private,” Margot says hastily, skipping out on the floor. “Onto the food, people!”

The people start cheering and heading off to the arena, but Will stays behind. This is mostly to avoid the crowd and getting overwhelmed by people. However, it also has the lovely side benefit of getting to watch the way Hannibal takes off the rest of his gear, and it’s almost a show in its own right despite the fact that all the skin Will glimpses is just some hair at the top of his chest where his shirt is unbuttoned and some toned stomach when he stretches to tug a vest off. 

“You dislike being sociable but approve of staring?”

“Hey, you stared first.”

“And what makes you say that?” Hannibal asks, resting his hand against his helmet and smiling like he knows something Will doesn’t.

“You called me lovely.”

“Am I to be penalized for speaking the truth?”

“ . . . You think I’m lovely?” It’s not that Will doesn’t know people find him attractive. He can be, sometimes, because he’s got the curly hair and the youthful face and blue eyes that make women scream for reasons he doesn’t quite comprehend. It’s just . . . different, is all, to hear someone say it so sincerely, so forcefully, so assuredly, like it’s The Truth and there’s nothing else to be said about it.

“Of course you are. Deadly and beautiful, such a lovely combination. Rather like a mongoose.”

“A what?”

Hannibal holds out a hand. “Let me treat you to dinner and I’ll tell you,” he teases.

Will shrugs and accepts, because, well. It’s gotten him this far.

* * *

It turns out that Hannibal is a fantastic if highly elaborate cook, addicted to saying weird metaphors and strange art displays, and slips into about six different languages for cursing when they start making out at the table and end up screwing like rabbits on his incredibly high-count and expensive sheets.

Will’s in love before the moon’s even set.

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to the [Birb Mistress](http://hachiseiko.tumblr.com/) for vetting my idea and in general making sure I made sense.
> 
> I hoped you enjoyed this! If you did, please leave a comment below or come say hi on [tumblr](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com)!


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